Do you remember...

This past week was probably the best teaching week so far! I taught my students about using the past tense with one of my all-time favorite songs, Remember the Time by Michael Jackson. After nine classes of playing the song back to back I know the song now, just as well as I did when I was a little boy.

Each class I would start off with a basic lesson of key words that are commonly followed by the past tense like: yesterday, last week, last month, last year, two months ago and so on. To provide context for the song to follow, I taught them about the use of the phrase, "I remember when..." or "Remember the time..." as well as "I/We used to..." These were all phrases that are used in the song and provided a nice transition (there had to be an academic component as much as I just wanted to listen to the song!)

After I passed out the worksheet of the lyrics with all the verbs in the past tense missing, I asked the students, "Do you know Michael Jackson?" Already anticipating the response, the students answered with a resounding, "YES!" All the while looking at me as if I had committed a crime by asking them such an asinine question. Their facial expressions came as no surprise, since the students have mentioned Michael Jackson's name on numerous occasions since my arrival and in many of my classes, we used Michael Jackson as the topic of discussion (the students had to describe and draw the physical features of the most famous person they know).

After we completed the worksheet together, I played the song for them. Watching the students bob their heads as they tried to follow the lyrics on the page made me smile and I couldn't resist asking them to sing along. This was quite the task as only a couple of my classes were able to sing along to the end. In some classes I didn't even attempt to ask them to sing as I knew it would be almost impossible. BUT there was one thing that I knew could not be thwarted by the language barrier and transcended all cultures....the moonwalk. Yep, I got all of my classes to get up out of their seats and moonwalk down the aisle...this wasn't as easy as I hoped since many of them were crippled by bashfulness but once "Mr. Kalada" did it, the students couldn't resist. See for yourself below...







Best,
Kal